Red and Black Hockey

On Friday, the Hurricanes used two third period goals to beat the visiting Senators 2-1. The win was coach Peter Laviolette’s 163rd behind the Carolina bench and his 240th overall NHL win. He is now the winningest US born coach in NHL history.

I realize that this accomplishment pales in comparison to Scotty Bowman, who won a like billion games and nine Stanley Cups. I also realize that the Detroit Red Wings invented the sun and the moon, but that isn’t my focus.

Playing in just his fifth game, goaltender Michael Leighton picked up his fourth win and has continued to be impressive as a backup.

Joe Corvo, playing in his second game against his former team, got the game winner.

The first period was quite boring. Jason Spezza had a close call with a goal midway through. His shot appeared to have beaten Leighton, but the call on the ice was “no goal”. Video replay was inconclusive as the puck was under Leighton the whole time. Across the line? Maybe, but there was no definitive evidence to overturn the call.

The second period was a bit of a snooze. Each team had a couple of cracks at the power play, but neither team could do anything about it. To break the monotony, the Rogers/Sportsnet crew did a nice feature on Brandon Sutter, inviting him into their box and talking to him about his concussion. All reports are that he’s recovering nicely and, in his words, should be back in the lineup “before you know it”. He skated for the first time since his injury today and said he felt fine.

Mike Fisher finally scored a goal at 18:08 of the second. He did a great job of crashing the net and pouncing on a juicy rebound from Daniel Alfredsson’s shot. Christoph Schubert had the secondary assist.

Carolina was beginning to control the flow in the third period, and Joe Corvo was very active. He ended up leading all players with seven shots. He had a hand in both Carolina goals.

First, Dennis Seidenberg fired a bomb from the left point for a power play goal at 11:05. Corvo started the play on the right point, made a long pass to Ray Whitney at the bottom of the left circle, who fed it up to Seids for his blast through traffic.

Later, Corvo buried a shot from the right dot after a bad Sens turnover deep in their zone. Rod Brind’Amour and Tim Gleason got the assists, but Chad LaRose should be given some love for forcing the turnover.

It seems like Corvo has made it a priority to bring something extra to the rink when he plays against the Sens. He was unhappy there and wasn’t popular at all with the press. He couldn’t wait to get out and was thrilled to come to an American team in a smaller market. Since the February trade, he’s played against the Sens twice. All he’s done is register four goals and an assist, and he has the game winning goal in both games.